Thursday, February 10, 2011

Booking Through Thursday: Great Debuts

There’s something wonderful about getting in on the ground floor of an author’s career–about being one of the first people to read and admire them, before they became famous best-sellers.Which authors have you been lucky enough to discover at the very beginning of their careers?And, if you’ve never had that chance, which author do you WISH you’d been able to discover at the very beginning?

Tough question! I wish I'd been reading A.S. Byatt and Margaret Atwood from the beginning but I would have had to start in the early 1970s; I learned to read young, but not that young! I don't read a whole lot of debut fiction but I was glad to be have read Kathleen Kent's first book, The Heretic's Daughter, right away, and Abraham Verghese's first novel Cutting for Stone, but then he was already a well-known writer of memoir. That's what happens a lot with me: I fall in love with an established author thinking he or she is not well known, only to find out that that person is wildly famous!

9 comments:

This is a great question! I, too, adored Kathleen Kent's The Heretic's Daughter, and really enjoyed the fact that she was a direct descendent of Martha Carrier as well. I think my favorite for this year is Liz Michalski whose Evenfall book came out in February. I cannot gush enough about this book - something about it just worked for me. I can't wait to see how her career goes. If you have a chance to read that one, let me know what you think! Have a great day, Marie!

This is a hard question for me to answer, because like you, I tend to think that an author is new, and then find out they have been around for a long time. Case in point is Kenneth Wishnia. I thought the book I just reviewed from him was his first, only to find he has written several others. I would have liked to "discover" him though. I do also think that Dolen Perkins-Valdez has a great career ahead of her, and as far as I know, has had only one book out.

I would have wished to have found Chimamanda, though I would still have failed since his first novel 'Purple Hibiscus' made her famous. Though I have gone on to read her other two books: Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck.

Similarly, by the time I read Ayi Kwei Armah he was already a famous writer whose writings have been appreciated long since. In fact even if I read the very first day I was born I would still have missed him by almost a decade and half.

Currently, I hope Martin Egblewogbe comes through and Ayesha Haruna Attah as I have read their first and only offering.

I love the idea of getting in on the ground floor or a writer's career. In reality, however, I am too afraid to spend precious reading time on something I may hate. This might seem limiting, but there are so many great books out there that I never feel like I am missing anything. At the very least I need a recommendation from someone I trust.

One good thing about discovering new to you authors is that if they are well-established you have a backlist to immediately dive into, rather than needing to wait until that debut author publishes something new.